Studio Update #2: December 2016

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Well, we did it – Tether has officially been Greenlit by the Steam community. I just want to thank everyone that voted for us. Personally, it means the world to me knowing that we have the backing of the PC community. It gives you a good feeling inside when you see nearly a year’s worth of hard work being recognized. The positive comments from the Steam community and PC press alike is such a boost, not just to myself but to the team as a whole.

As I eluded to before we’ve been working on Tether now for nearly a year. You wouldn’t believe how much the project has evolved in that time or how quickly it’s all come together. We’re currently putting the finishing touches to our demo, which we hope to have completed before Christmas, so we can all enjoy a break over the festive period.

In honesty we had hoped to have our demo done by now but we decided to update too Unreal Engine 4.14 and implement PerForce as we were running into revisioning issues. It’s something that took a little longer than anticipated to get working correctly but well worth the trouble (software revisioning is king).

So what’s next? As we head into the new year, we’ll be looking to try and secure some funding (publisher or crowd funding were undecided), and look to bring one or two more experienced heads in, to aid help us make the best experience possible.

Once again from everyone at the studio thank you for voting for Tether.

Finally be sure to check out all our social media channels (links below) and sign up to our newsletter to keep up to date.

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I started the Freesphere Entertainment in May of 2016 with the view of blending mechanically interesting games with deep and interesting worlds with compelling stories. After creating many prototypes over the last fourteen months we’re very close to officially revealing our first game.

Myself and the team have released games before with other studios, but we’ve all craved the creative freedom to make our own decisions – no longer having our fate tied to someone else’s decisions. That was the reason for starting Freesphere, to give us the freedom we required to make the games we wanted to make, how we wanted to make them.

As I previously eluded too, it hasn’t been an easy process; being major fans of horror and storytelling we’ve all gravitated towards the same ideas. A horror experience, joined with a believable story surrounding interesting characters and themes. Initially we started off like a house on fire, we’d concepted a project and we’re deep into the development when another project came out of the blue and stole our thunder – same settings, similar story, similar design, same engine. It was totally uncanny. It knocked the stuffing out of us – me the most. Being indie you always crave to be different and I knew we couldn’t be. So with it being so close to Christmas, we decided to enjoy the holidays with the family and pick it up in the New Year.

A funny side note, that game was actually Allison Road – odd how things turn out isn’t it.

After a short break we began talking and brainstorming ideas, but nothing was clicking. We’d go back and forth with ideas which we liked, but then we’d do what we usually do, and pick holes in it (believability is everything to us). It was amazing how many times during this process we came back to PT and how currently the genre is filled with PT clones. This is not the route we want to go down again as there is enough competition in this space.

The infamous Allison Road

Instead, we’ll be focusing on going our own route pulling ideas in from multiple genres across video games to make our games. Games are constantly evolving and so should developers, staying with tried and trusted patterns is how we end up the stale world of AAA game development at the moment.

In the future we can expect more general posts like this about the studio and more game designed focused ones, like our previous post on how to scare players.